Paige West

I started the Ph.D. program at Rutgers in 1995 and Michael taught my first anthropology class there. He taught the "proseminar" where each faculty member came in and discussed her or his work and then we did some readings in the person's field and discussed the professor's work and the readings. Michael was fantastic in the class. He was so generous towards his colleague's scholarship - helping us to find the value and worth in everything from the study of gender in China to the study of human evolution through primate jaws. In that class he had a gift for making things one was not interested in both interesting and seemingly important. It seems to me that this is connected to Michael's extraordinary sense of the field of anthropology as one that encompasses human lives across time and space. We all say that lots, that that is what we examine as a field, but Michael was able to show us, using our faculty's work, how this really is the case.

Michael also told me, as a graduate student who was just learning about social theory and reading Foucault and other for the first time, that to be a "theory person" I was going to have to become a more careful reader and writer. He was correct and this has helped me throughout my career.

Other Michael memories:

I loved Sadie the dog. She would sit in the window when I met with Michael, he was my initial advisor in the anthropology department (as I had come to work with someone in Human Ecology and needed an anthropology person that first year). She was so sweet and Michael was so gentle and sweet with her. 

The day that one of his colleagues said something truly insane in the Proseminar and Michael started laughing and disguised it as a cough so as not to offend the colleague. I think of this just about every time someone I work with says something insane in a faculty meeting and I keep myself from laughing. 

His first book - Coming of Age - and reading it and teaching it for the first time. 

I have so many warm feelings towards you Michael. 

Paige